


Amor Vincit Omnia

by lonelywalker



Category: The Art of Fielding - Chad Harbach
Genre: Age Difference, Canon Gay Relationship, Character of Color, Coming Out, Father-Daughter Relationship, Graduation, Interracial Relationship, M/M, Older Man/Younger Man, SlightAU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-03
Updated: 2012-11-03
Packaged: 2017-11-17 16:22:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/553533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Guert broke up with Owen before anyone else found out about them. Now, more than a year later, Owen's graduating and they can be together. Guert just has to come out to his daughter, the school, and everyone he knows in the process. </p><p>Spoilers for most of the book.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Amor Vincit Omnia

"I can't."

The words came out as a pained whisper in a quiet room, the hum from Owen's laptop suddenly ominous. He couldn't even bear to look Owen in the eye. Owen, who had just described everything his own heart desired but had never dared to voice: a real _date_ , with dinner and kisses, followed by spending the night together. It was everything Owen deserved, too. He needed so much more than a relationship built on secrecy that barely existed outside a locked office door.

Affenlight glanced up, hoping that Owen could look right through him and _understand_ , at least. "I'd lose my job," he said, and that sounded pitiful even to his own ears. What it must seem like to twenty-one-year-old Owen with his freedom and idealism was too shameful to mention. "I'd lose _every_ job. Pella needs me. She needs me _here_. There's no way she'll get into any other decent college, and I'm the only family she's got. I can't just…"

Owen touched his shoulder. "Guert. It's okay."

He silently wished he were crying, that tears were streaming down his cheeks, that Owen could _see_ the agony of feeling that was building within him. What must Owen see instead? An old man making excuses.

"It's not okay." It would be simpler just to get up and leave. Make a clean break. Never think about it again. But it felt more like a discussion than a declaration, like he was still hoping Owen-the-professor would eliminate his confusion with the one easy solution he just couldn't find. "I love you."

"And you love your daughter."

"Yes."

"So it's okay."

Affenlight looked up at him, really looked now. Owen's voice was still the same, cool and measured, calmer than Affenlight had ever been while awake. Something in Affenlight was irritated that Owen didn't seem as devastated as he, Affenlight, felt. Perhaps because he had expected this all along, perhaps because of the reason they were discussing this in the first place. 

"I'm not ashamed of you," he said. "It's not about being gay."

"Isn't it?" 

"No!" It was one thing breaking up with his boyfriend. Being called a homophobe while he did it was quite another. "If you were a girl I'd say the same thing. If you want to go down to Admissions right now and quit your BA program - which, by the way, you're not doing, so don't even think about it - I'll kiss you in the middle of the quad."

At least that raised the barest hint of a smile, but Owen's tone was still disbelieving. "You'd tell your daughter? You'd let the whole faculty and student body know you're queer? Don't tell me that doesn't scare you."

"It scares me plenty. But it must've scared you to come out too."

"It did. Until I read your book."

Affenlight smiled weakly. "Maybe I should read it one of these days." 

He got to his feet. Part of him wanted to stay here in the safety of yet another room behind a locked door, where Owen and his herbal aromas and ever-growing book collection lived. Here they could kiss. They could make love. They could do anything. 

Affenlight checked his watch, ran his fingers back anxiously through his hair. "I'm supposed to be meeting my daughter. She requires me to serve as some sort of living buffer zone between her and her ex-husband. Or soon-to-be ex-husband."

Owen smiled. "Sounds like fun."

If Owen were just to scream and maybe throw something, leaving would be easier. "I… I don't know that we should see each other again," Affenlight said. "But I'll let you know how the environmental initiatives go."

"My hero," Owen said faintly. "Will you be at the game tomorrow?"

"I'm not sure that's such a good idea. But good luck."

"Luck? I require no luck."

Affenlight smiled and turned to open the door and leave, doing his very best to pretend he'd simply come for a discussion about sober ecological issues, or perhaps inquiring after Owen's welfare, or even Henry's. More than likely, no one would even notice, much less care.

"Guert?"

Once he'd viewed the intimacy of first names between him and Owen – him and O – with delight and a heart-thudding anticipation of an intimacy that reached beyond words. Now a sedate "President Affenlight" might have been more appropriate.

He turned back, against his better judgment, his hand still on the doorknob. Owen took two steps forward, cupped his face between warm hands, and kissed him. Not for long, not for long enough for Affenlight to even react, but still a kiss.

"I'll be graduating in a year," Owen said. "If you're telling the truth, if it's only the fact that I'm a student that's stopping you, then maybe we should talk after the ceremony."

Affenlight steeled himself against the misery of false hope. "A year's a long time."

"Not that long. You'd better start working on your speech."

***

The campus was quiet around ten in the morning, with no classes scheduled and most of the students having already departed for homes near and far. Still, as Affenlight sat up on the base of the Melville statue in his best suit and smoked a lonely cigarette, no fewer than six students or pairs of students walked by and gave him one last conspiratorial grin.

Even though he knew the vast majority of students by name, he certainly hadn’t spoken to them all… but they all knew him. He’d been the reason some of them, like Mike Schwartz, had applied in the first place. He’d been the first friendly face and kind words they’d ever had in a terrifying new world that, for most of them, was very far away from their parents and friends. And, although Affenlight himself was loathe to mention it, he was something of a campus legend: competent quarterback, inadvertent discoverer of the treasured Melville speech, and a minor academic celebrity. Westish, despite its best efforts, had never produced anyone more accomplished than him.

Today, though, he thought that perhaps that might change.

He heard Pella before he saw her: “You’re not supposed to be smoking.”

Affenlight took another defensive drag on the cigarette. “No pity for the condemned man?”

She was in sweatpants and a college-branded t-shirt, returning home from a shift in the dining room. Whether home today was his own rooms in Scull Hall or Mike Schwartz’s house in town, he couldn’t hope to guess. Still, she looked cheerful on a June morning, the sun not yet harsh.

Pella nudged up alongside him. “You’re worried about your speech?”

“Not really.”

“Of course you’re not. You love these things. You could stand up there and not say a word and they’d all be swooning over you anyway. The mothers especially. So what’s up?”

He glanced at her and then away, deterred by how much she actually seemed to care. In the last year they'd become closer than they'd been since she was twelve, which was possibly largely to do with being in the same place for more than two weeks without arguing. “Do you think I could kidnap you for half an hour?”

“Half an hour? To do what?”

“Just take a walk. I need to talk to you about something.”

She eyed him suspiciously. “This isn’t one of those ‘I have cancer’ talks, is it? And if it is, just pretend I didn’t say that.”

“I don’t have cancer.” Affenlight dropped the cigarette and was already grinding it out with his finely-polished shoe when he remembered just how much he detested seeing cigarette butts in the quad. Oh well. Melville would have to forgive him. “Please?”

Pella shrugged. “Fine.” She did a very good impression of a carefree student, hands in her pockets, kicking pebbles along the path that led down by the lake, but Affenlight could sense her mind working, processing all the possibilities… or perhaps that was just him, already trying to predict her reactions and have the perfect responses in place. He could drive himself crazy trying to out-think Pella who, when she tried, was on an entirely different level from even most academics he’d known.

“So what’s on your mind?” she asked once there was no one else in sight. 

Affenlight had half-hoped they’d run into a whole team of football players training. _Being_ it was no problem at all. _Saying_ it was a challenge he couldn’t believe people far less privileged than him somehow managed to face daily. Then again, most of them didn’t have to say it to their daughters at the age of sixty-two.

“I’m gay,” Affenlight said. 

Pella looked at him, eyebrows half-raised. “What?”

He was usually good at spotting rhetorical questions. But it didn’t matter. “I’m gay. Or, at least, not entirely straight.”

“You’re kidding.”

She’d stopped dead in the path, which meant he had to stop too and actually look her in the eye. “No.”

“You’re serious.”

“Yes, I am both serious and not kidding, in the event there’s some heretofore unknown semantic field not covered by either option.”

Pella fixed him with a glare. “Dad.”

“Sorry.” He, like someone he’d known once, became much more verbose when he was nervous or excited. Most people were daunted by it. Pella had learned by the age of four that it was the easiest time to get him to crumble like sand.

“How long has this been going on? I mean… how long have you known?”

Saying it should’ve been the hard part. But now he was re-evaluating. Explaining was the hard part. “About eighteen months.”

She was frowning at the ground now, one hand blindly pawing back hair that kept getting swept back into her face by the wind coming in off the lake. “Oh.”

“It doesn’t change how I feel about you, Pella. Or how I felt about your mother.”

“Well sure, of course not. But it’s not like you two were star-crossed lovers anyway.” Something, though, was clearly bothering her, even if she herself didn’t quite know what it was. “So what happened? There was a guy? There must’ve been a guy.”

“There was a guy,” he agreed.

“Holy shit, you had a boyfriend. A _boyfriend_. My father had a boyfriend.” It sounded like elementary LGBT-oriented English lessons. “Past tense?”

“Past tense. We broke up last spring.”

She was looking at him now as though she would just have to see someone different, to start viewing things about his life she’d never seen as gay – his book, his years on a ship, his dress sense – as suddenly evidence that should’ve made everything obvious years before. He’d done precisely the same thing the previous year, astonished by the depths of his own feelings in a direction he hadn’t been aware even existed before.

“Okay,” she said. “So. I love you.”

He was saying “I love you too” when she hugged him, fierce and tight as if otherwise he might miss or misinterpret the full force of her love for him, gay or straight or something in between. There had been so many years when he’d longed for some sign of affection from her, or even a phone call, that he couldn’t possibly do anything now but hug her back, closing his eyes as he stroked her hair. His little girl. The best thing that had ever happened to him, no matter how inadvertent it was. Better than Melville. Better even than the love he’d stumbled into last year, although that was a close one.

“Why did you feel like telling me this now?” she asked when they resumed their walk. “Drawing a close to the year?”

“Not exactly. The thing is… He might be here today.”

“Your ex?”

“Yes. I haven’t seen him in a year and I’m not exactly sure what could happen.”

“Dad, not that I know anything about your taste in men, but I doubt you go for the drunk, violent types.”

He smiled. “That’s not what I meant.”

She tugged on his cuff, stopping him from just striding away from her. “Dad. You haven’t seen him for a year? And he’s going to be here today? You haven’t been dating one of the parents, have you?”

“No.”

“Not that that would be bad. Genevieve was nice. And _hot_. I mean, if I…” She stopped, precisely as quick to get it as he’d thought she might be. “You were dating a student. Who hasn’t been here for a year, and graduates today.”

“Yes.”

Now she was truly looking at him as though she couldn’t recognize him at all. “ _Owen_? You were dating _Owen Dunne_?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“Not long. A month.”

“Owen _Dunne_? He’s about twelve years old.”

Affenlight sighed. “He’s twenty-two.”

“Which is _forty_ years younger than you. He’s younger than I am! Not to mention, because I have already, he’s a _student_.”

He badly wanted to feel her arms around him again, to see her smile, to have some sort of acceptance. “I know. That’s why I ended it.”

“After a month. You can do a lot in a month.”

“Pella… I’m not David.”

“No, you’re not. At least you didn’t drag him out of school and marry him.” She turned away, looking out toward the lake.

He waited, feeling the weight of the lighter in his pocket. The cigarettes, though, were still on his desk. At least she hadn't simply stormed off.

“I’m probably being unfair,” she said finally. “Good for you, finding someone you like. Figuring out who you are. You’re just not supposed to be behaving like a kid. Or fucking one. Which, by the way, I don’t want to think about for a whole spectrum of reasons.”

Affenlight thought of response after response, and voiced none. 

Pella turned back, her expression wary. “He’ll be here today.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. We haven’t talked. A lot of students can’t make it because of work, family… He might still be in Japan.”

“No, I mean. He’ll be here today. Mike’s been talking about it for weeks. The prodigal right fielder returns.”

“Oh.” It should have been a relief, at least because it was one more doubt washed out of his mind. Instead he could feel his stomach clenching, twisting.

“So what were you worried about? Owen’s more likely to fall asleep than storm the stage and out you in front of everyone.”

He smiled slightly at the thought. “When we broke up, he told me he’d see me today. That he wouldn’t be a student anymore, and if I still felt the same way maybe we could work something out.”

Pella was frowning, as if his words contained secret, almost impenetrable meaning. “And do you? Still feel the same way?”

“Yes, I do.”

“You’re in love with him.”

“Yes.”

She breathed in, deep like she’d just been winded. “I… I don’t even know what to say.”

“It’s been a year,” Affenlight said in his most reasonable parental tone. “He’s young. He’s brilliant. He’s beautiful. Of course you’re right. There’s absolutely no reason he should be with someone like me. I’m old and I’m a dolt in comparison. Besides, he must have met someone. Several someones.”

“You’re not a dolt,” Pella said, a little testily. "And you're not old."

“No. And he's not a kid.”

She shrugged. “I only really met him once, and he had a major traumatic head injury at the time so I probably shouldn’t judge. So. If he met someone. If he doesn’t want you. What are you going to do?”

His shrug was exactly alike. It could have been genetically coded. “Live a life of mournful solitude, I expect.”

“Oh, bullshit. You’re smart and charming and gorgeous, and there isn’t a single straight woman or gay man in Wisconsin who wouldn’t do you if they had the chance. Not to mention every mother in that auditorium this afternoon.”

“Pella. I’m sixty-two and I live in the middle of nowhere. This town barely has a bar, and all the people there are people I can’t date.”

Now she just looked exasperated. “Door County’s, what, half an hour away? And even Milwaukee isn’t that far. We have a thing called the internet.”

“Internet dating? Pella, I don’t think…”

“Just because Melville didn’t endorse it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. In fact, let’s make a deal. If Owen's stupid enough not to want you, you have to promise to go on at least one date. I’ll set it up, find some hot guy or girl you’ll like. Of an appropriate age. Like, at least twenty-five.”

The vast, unknowable length of time following today seemed so vast and unknowable that he nodded. “All right. And if he does want me?”

“Then you’ll have enough to worry about. Like potentially being fired, and his mother killing you.”

“And you?”

She gave him a helpless look, one he imagined she’d learned from him. “I don’t know. I want you to be happy. I really, really do.”

“Is it so bad if I’m happy with Owen?”

“Maybe not, if he’s happy with you.” She was struggling with this like she’d never struggled with any other concept he’d introduced to her. “It’s just… very, very weird. And, anyway, like you said. He’s probably over you, and you should be over him too.”

“Yes.”

“Okay then.”

Silence hung between them. Even the waves on the lakeshore seemed muted. He numbly felt that an “I have cancer” speech might have gone much better than “I’m in love”. 

***

The day did anything but pass quickly, despite the laundry list of responsibilities Affenlight had to fulfill, the vast majority of which involved smiling at and shaking hands with a dazzling array of trustees, parents, faculty members, and students. None of the students were Owen. Some of them seemed a little drunk, or perhaps only high on coffee and excitement. Affenlight was left to consider just how bad the decision to tackle the day sober had been. 

He usually liked nothing better than the ceremony itself – the grandeur the college managed to display despite its small size, the inspiration, the cheers, and of course his own, inevitably well-received speech. But this year Owen was in the crowd of robed students, and he both did and didn't want to see him. Of course Owen could see _him_ , but what did that matter? Had he changed at all in a year? What was a year to a man in his sixties, particularly compared to a man like Owen in his twenties, when every minute seemed to have unbearable significance?

Stepping up to the podium, though, the anxious thoughts and internal debates fell away, replaced by the words and, more than that, the performance. Throughout his teens and twenties he’d always been shy, happier to write than to speak up in class. Even bartending had meant far more listening than talking. It had only been at Harvard, when no one had asked the questions he’d needed answered, that he’d started to talk and explain and argue and lecture, and he’d never really stopped. Accepting the position at Westish had meant endless schmoozing and politics rather than teaching, but he’d found himself to be good at that too, or at least as good at charming trustees as he’d been at asking out the eligible ladies of Cambridge.

Looking at the crowd while making his speech, while being President Affenlight who was always chipper and positive and witty, seemed suddenly effortless, even though he recognized every face among the graduating class… including Henry Skrimshander, baseball hero. Beside him, a few inches taller, wearing glasses, and looking as rapt as anyone in the entire hall, was Owen Dunne.

After the ceremony, he had plenty to do, plenty of people to congratulate and who effusively congratulated him, inquired after Pella, praised the Harpooners’ performance. He didn’t run into Owen, not even accidentally, although he did rescue Henry from a scrum of parents, mostly fathers, seeking autographs and insight. Poor boy, so inherently good-natured, and today without Mike Schwartz to fend off all disasters for him. Or, interestingly enough, Owen.

Time was pressing on into late afternoon, and he was about to ask Henry where his former roommate might be when a very familiar, very attractive African-American woman touched his shoulder and Henry excused himself.

“Hello Guert.”

“Genevieve.” His very best smile was being called upon more often than not today. “How are you? I see Owen’s back from Tokyo. You must be very proud.”

Her smile, in comparison, was a little wry, a little sad. She reached out and smoothed down his Westish tie, ecru harpooners on navy blue. “He’s waiting for you. By the statue.”

And then, as though her attention had been caught by another parent, she smiled brightly and moved on.

Affenlight stared after her, dazed, puzzled, until someone spoke to him and he dimly answered with a vague excuse, heading for the exit.

There were students outside, but not so many, most of them heading out to the lake to take photographs. Out by the Melville statue there was only one, sitting in the same place Affenlight had sat in the morning, wearing a dapper gray suit with an open-necked white shirt, coolly smoking a joint.

“You’d better put that out,” Affenlight said. “You could get suspended.”

Owen smiled. “Too late. I just spoke to the dean. I’m officially no longer a student. If anything, I’m on staff. Professor Sobel asked me to teach again this summer.”

“That’s great.” Affenlight stopped maybe three paces away, hands bunched in his pockets. “How was Tokyo?”

“Wonderful. Beautiful. But it’s nice to be home. How are you, Guert?”

“Still here. I fear I’m as much a fixture as Herman.”

“But better looking, at least.”

Affenlight considered this. “Fewer pigeons sit on me.”

Owen smiled again. “How’s Pella?”

“Good. Very good. Mad at me, but good.”

“Mad at you?” Even with the joint between his lips, Owen still had more of a professorial attitude than Affenlight had ever managed to cultivate. 

“I told her something this morning. She didn’t take it very well.”

“Oh?”

Saying it for the second time, even to someone who already knew, didn’t seem much easier. “I’m gay. And I’m in love with a man.”

The way the shadows were beginning to fall, he couldn’t quite see Owen’s eyes, but then Owen never betrayed any emotion anyway. “I never thought Pella would have a problem with gay people.”

“She doesn’t. She has a problem with me dating a student.”

“It’s true, Guert. I read the entire college honor code last spring. I read it again yesterday. Far better that you date someone more appropriate, like a faculty member.”

“That would be the prevailing opinion.”

Owen breathed out smoke, tapped his pocket. “Would you like a cigarette?”

“I quit.”

“When?”

“Last spring. And again this morning.”

Owen laughed, standing up and straightening his jacket. “So. Can I ask if you’re seeing anyone?”

“Seeing would be the word for it.” Affenlight’s hands clenched tighter, knuckles white. “And you?”

“Tokyo seems to attract the world’s most preternaturally beautiful and exceptionally intelligent people,” Owen said, and stubbed out the remains of his joint at Melville’s feet. “But my mind’s been on someone else, quite far away from there…” His eyes met Affenlight’s. “Do you think it would be forward if I asked you out to dinner?”

“You already did, once.”

“No, as I recall, I suggested you ask me out to dinner. You decided it was better, more ethical, perhaps, to end our relationship. Don’t get me wrong, Guert, I respected that decision, just as I’ll respect your decision now. However, the situation today is very different. We’re both adults. There’s no law or rule or regulation in this institution, state, or country that prevents us from going to dinner, or dating, or making love. Some people might not like it, of course. There’s still a chance you’ll lose friends. You might even lose your job. But I’m talking to you now because I hope you’re willing to take the risk. And I’m asking you to dinner because I hope you can see how good we might be together.”

Affenlight’s heart seemed to have stopped. “And this dinner would be?”

“Actually it would be at Maison Robert this evening, with Henry’s family and my mother as well as Mike and your daughter. And also my mother’s boyfriend, the less said about whom the better.”

“You’re asking me to a dinner I would likely be going to anyway?”

Owen shrugged. “But this way, you’d be my date. I doubt the actual content of the meal would differ very much, but we’d be spared the intense awkwardness of avoiding each other for a couple of hours, we could play footsie under the table, and then afterward I might even be persuaded to come have coffee back at your place.”

Two students brushed by Affenlight’s arm, heading toward the library. He turned and watched them go, looked back at Owen. “Sounds nice,” he said.

“I’m not looking for a long-term commitment from you, Guert, but we have to be clear on this. I am looking for commitment. I need someone who’ll go out with me, who’ll hold my hand and call me his boyfriend, or partner, or lover, or whatever term turns you on. I can’t sneak around anymore. Not for Pella’s sake, and not for yours.”

Affenlight found he was nodding. “You deserve that. You deserved it last year, too.”

“And yet you still haven’t said yes.”

More students were coming into the quad, more parents and faculty as time wore on and they needed to change for dinner or slope off to the dining hall. Affenlight glanced at them, realizing that his heart hadn’t stopped at all. It was just thrumming so quickly he couldn’t tell one beat from another.

Owen reached for his hand. “Guert…”

Affenlight took Owen’s hand in his and, like an old schoolyard prank, pulled Owen just off-balance enough that Affenlight could kiss him without giving himself time to think, his free hand cupping the back of Owen’s head, short, stiff hair against his palm where once there had been horrific bruising. 

Across the quad, someone whistled. Someone else cheered. Affenlight didn’t want to know who. He especially didn’t want to know who might be watching, shocked or dismayed or disapproving. Fortunately the best way to do this was to keep kissing Owen, a decision Owen seemed to approve of without reservation – kisses that were almost enough to make up for a year of solitude.

“I love you,” Affenlight said, found himself saying, Owen’s fingers warm on his cheek. “I’m so sorry, O.”

Owen kissed him again, soft and sure. “Of course, we don’t really have to go to dinner…”

His apartment was one staircase away, empty of distractions, his bed precisely where he wanted to see Owen tonight and tomorrow morning and every other day. But there were a lot of hours in tonight.

“We really do. I’d love to be your date, Mr. Dunne. And I’m looking forward to the footsie.”

They hugged, Owen impossibly slender and delicate in Affenlight’s arms, yet strong as steel. Affenlight leaned his head against Owen’s shoulder, feeling the tension of the past year, and even this morning’s dispute with Pella, drain away. For once in his life, he had someone he cared about more than the anxieties preying on his mind.

A few feet away, someone cleared his throat. Affenlight glanced around. There, outlined by the lights of the chapel and still wearing his finest robes, stood Bruce Gibbs. 

“Guert?” Gibbs said. “If I might have a word…”

***

The street out in front of Maison Robert was packed with cars, mainly from out-of-town parents willing to stump up the cash for a celebratory meal. Affenlight parked half a block away, released his seatbelt, and sighed. They were late, and it was all too tempting to just sit here until they were really unacceptably late and then just leave. The last time he’d been in anything like a serious relationship had been twenty-five years ago, with Pella’s mother, and that had been a relationship explicitly defined by just how lacking in seriousness it was. He hadn’t met the parents of someone he was dating since high school. He certainly hadn’t been nervous about whether his daughter would like them.

And now, here it was. The perfect storm of dating: Owen’s mother, Affenlight’s daughter, and a circle of friends and acquaintances ready to pass judgment. Doubtless Pella and Genevieve were already giggling like old friends, polishing off most of a wine bottle as they compared stories about the various fucked-up men in their lives.

Owen opened the passenger-side door and got out, which meant Affenlight had to man up and get out too. It would’ve been nice if the dinner were in Milwaukee. He’d have gladly suffered the four-hour round trip just to avoid being in a town where almost everyone, and certainly everyone out for dinner tonight, knew him. It _wasn’t_ that he was ashamed. But he was scared.

“Come here,” Owen said.

On the sidewalk, as if they were an old married couple, Owen unthreaded Affenlight’s tie and unbuttoned his collar. And, after a thought, another button too. He tucked the rolled-up Westish tie into his pocket. “There. Practically a new man.”

He offered his hand.

Affenlight hesitated, but took Owen’s hand securely in his before speaking: “This isn’t San Francisco, O.”

“No, it’s a little Wisconsin town mostly filled with people who couldn’t care less. Don’t panic, Guert, I’m not going to give you a blow job in the town square. But I’m celebrating, it’s our first date, and I want to hold your hand.” Owen looked over at him as they walked, smiling. “I should’ve brought you a corsage.”

“This isn’t the prom, either.”

“I missed my prom, actually. So did half the year. We all sat out in my mom’s garden, smoking pot and protesting.”

“I went to mine.”

“Of course you did. You must’ve been asked by twenty girls… twenty guys probably wanted to as well.”

“I think you vastly overestimate how attractive I was at eighteen.”

“I don’t think so. Did you ever go to a reunion?”

“No, I’ve barely been back at all.” Family to Affenlight had always meant people a generation older than him, brothers who could be his fathers, parents who had died before he was thirty and never lived to see his own progeny. For the past three decades he’d only returned for funerals. In theory his two surviving older brothers could contact him the way anyone contacted him, but they were in their late seventies now and not the types to care about e-mail or Facebook even if they were Owen’s age. He doubted they had anything in common but a name.

Owen was unfazed. “I’ll take you to mine. Show you off.”

After more than a year without contact, following a break-up that had made neither of them happy, it shouldn’t be this simple to slip into an easy rapport, to walk along a town street holding hands… Every time Affenlight actually thought about it, it terrified him. He tried not to think about it.

Inside Maison Robert, mostly populated by loud students and harried waiters, their party was already gathered – Mike and Pella, who Affenlight was happy to see, Henry and three people who looked sufficiently like him to be his family, and Genevieve with a dapper Asian-American man. A couple of wine bottles were indeed already half-empty.

“Sorry,” Owen said breezily, kissing his mother’s cheek, fist-bumping Henry. “Guert was being read the riot act, which is surprisingly long given how small the college is.”

Guert was busy smiling at Henry’s parents, shaking hands. He thought there was a slight hesitation from Henry’s father, but perhaps not. “Guert Affenlight.”

“We loved your speech,” Henry’s mother said. “We didn’t know you would be coming tonight.”

“Well, Owen asked me at the last minute and I certainly can’t turn down good food.” He glanced at Pella as he sat down, a little worried what he might see. She looked good, had always looked good since that first night he'd picked her up from the airport, stressed and exhausted. On her other side sat Mike Schwartz in his sports jacket, looking faintly bemused by the new arrivals. Pella must have told him, Affenlight thought.

“The riot act?” Pella asked pointedly.

“Nothing bad,” he said.

“Public displays of affection apparently bring the college into disrepute,” Owen explained, sitting down himself and grabbing a wine bottle to examine. “It’s not that they discriminate against queers of all colors and stripes, it’s that they’d vastly prefer we were all carved out of marble.”

Pella looked between them. “ _What_ happened?”

“It’s all over the Westish tag,” said a voice. Henry’s sister (what was her name? Sophie?) held up her phone. 

“The what?”

“On Twitter. ‘Hashtag Westish. Just saw Affy frenching a cute guy in the quad. Hashtag ew.’” She shrugged. “It’s how I keep up with the baseball scores.”

“You kissed Owen in the quad?” Pella was staring at him with renewed intensity. “I’m shocked. And yet also proud. It’s a strange night.”

Mike charitably poured more wine into her glass. Henry, meanwhile, was whispering to Owen, presumably trying to get the Cliffs Notes of their relationship without letting his parents hear.

Sophie smiled at Affenlight across the table. “How do you say your name?”

“Guert. It’s Dutch.”

“And you’re dating Owen-O?”

“Trying to. If I survive tonight.”

He felt Owen lightly grasp the back of his neck, smoothing down freshly-cut hair. The touch tingled all the way down between his shoulder blades. 

“I didn’t think Westish would view their president dating a student as anything like appropriate,” Mr. Skrimshander said. “Let alone… _frenching in the quad_.”

“I’m not a student, sir,” Owen said mildly. “Which I seem to be pointing out to everyone I meet today.”

Affenlight put on his very best smile of seemingly effortless charm. “I think we can all forgive a little exuberance, Mr. Skrimshander. Rest assured I do not intend to make a habit of having my personal life on Twitter. And, although Westish has gossip like any other college, I would hope that its president being in a loving, committed relationship would matter much more than any superficial appearance of being inappropriate.” 

“Good luck with that,” Pella muttered, just as the waiter appeared and Henry’s father suddenly became absolutely fascinated by the menu.

***

“Your mother’s a very understanding woman.”

It was close to eleven when they pulled into one of many free parking spaces near Scull Hall. But for a few night-time security officers and those faculty members who lived on-campus, no staff would be present at all. The students, naturally, were resigned to parking a good distance away. Affenlight usually had nothing more to carry than a few files. Tonight he had what seemed like the entirety of Owen Dunne’s worldly goods in the back seat and trunk. 

Owen opened up the trunk and gazed at a backpack that seemed likely to be used for Everest expeditions and could helpfully double as a body bag. “She’s had a year to get used to the idea. Besides, she likes you, Guert. And she’s a very liberal-minded person. Where did you think I got it from?”

Affenlight had a tendency to assume Owen had sprung fully-formed out of some nexus made entirely of literary criticism and marijuana. “You told her last year?”

“She knows when I’m unhappy. I was unhappy.”

“Oh.” Affenlight hauled the backpack out, hoisting one strap over his shoulder. “Hand me that box, will you?” He hadn’t seriously lifted weights in years, and he’d possibly overestimated his own strength. But a little soreness tomorrow would remind him to swallow his pride and sneak into the gym alongside all those football players and lithe women in spandex.

Owen took the other, marginally smaller, bag from the back seat. “Pella seems… not upset.”

The Audi’s lights flashed with a beep as Affenlight locked it. At least Scull Hall was just down the alley and to the left. “She’s happy you want to be with me, and angry that I want to be with you, so we’re maintaining an uneasy equilibrium. But at least she’s in a more stable place this year. Her father’s mid-life crisis isn’t going to ruin her life.”

“Mid-life crisis?” Owen smiled.

“If your ecological plans are going to pay off within my lifetime, you’d better hope I live to be a hundred and twenty-five. Besides, you’re a more responsible choice than a motorcycle.”

Upstairs, Affenlight carefully positioned box and bags by the wall between slightly wobbly book stacks. "Coffee?" he asked, wiping his hands on his pants.

Owen was already looking at the bookcases with wonder. "Why not some of that scotch I missed the last time I was here?"

"Why not, indeed." He fetched tumblers from the kitchen, finding Owen examining a framed photograph. "You should just leave your things here. I'll clear out some closet space tomorrow. There's no point spending all your time going between here and whatever pokey room the drama department wants to store you in for the summer."

Owen eyed him. "Guert, are you asking me to move in with you?"

"It just seems sensible."

"It does, doesn't it?" Owen turned his attention back to the photo. "I have to say, Guert, your daughter is incredibly cute. And you're even hot with a beard."

Affenlight took the photo, swapping it for a half-full tumbler. "Thanks. I think." He sat down at the end of the couch, the scotch thick on his tongue as he examined the picture with as much interest as Owen had. It had been here so long, unmoved, that he'd ceased to really see it. Pella, five or six, laughing on her father's shoulders. Twenty years ago already. Ten since he'd even been in that same park.

Owen sat down beside him, leaning in over his shoulder, pausing for a moment before kissing his neck. "You look tense."

He was being ridiculous. After spending a year thinking about Owen, fantasizing about Owen – not just sex, but his company, the idea of waking up to him and coming home to him – Affenlight was practically ignoring him now that he was here in the flesh. They should never have had a drink, should've never even gone to dinner. It gave him too much time to think.

Affenlight set down the photograph and his tumbler both and sat back with a sigh. "I'm going to be fired, O."

Owen settled against him, so warm, so good, a hand on Affenlight's thigh. "I thought Gibbs only rapped your knuckles."

"He only wanted to make sure I wouldn't do anything even worse before Monday." Affenlight slid an arm around Owen's slender shoulders. "Let's not kid ourselves. The fact that I haven't done anything technically against the honor code doesn't mean much. My employers are overwhelmingly straight white men at the conservative edge of liberal. Simply having a gay president would be deeply questionable, let alone one courting scandal by living with a former student." 

"You're great at your job, Guert. They can't dispute that."

"Fine, I give good speeches. But mainly I'm a fundraiser, and that hasn't been anything like easy in years. Single-handedly bringing the college into disrepute won't do me any favors. I've been here for nine years. They've probably been considering replacing me anyway. A fresh face."

Owen breathed out. Just like Pella, he grew frustrated when a problem didn't have a reasonable solution. "Then they're fools and ciphers."

"Maybe so. But I knew this would happen. I was at Harvard last month for a conference… I've spoken to a few old friends about going back to teaching. I'd love to do it, and I like Cambridge... I'd just prefer to be here."

"So teach here."

"I'm not sure the trustees would approve."

"Guert, they're not _that_ foolish. You _should_ be teaching at Harvard or Oxford, or Tokyo for that matter. You're vastly overqualified for this place. And we have plenty of queer lecturers. No one's going to care who a professor dates." 

Affenlight was tempted to argue against that idea too... but it really did seem possible, not least because it would offer the trustees a face-saving way out without having to fire the closest thing to a star Westish had ever had. Prior to Henry Skrimshander, at least. "Maybe," he admitted. "But Harvard would be far better for you. There aren't too many opportunities for a playwright out here, not unless you want to teach composition for the rest of your life."

"I don't need opportunities out here." Owen's hand stroked a little higher. "I only need a place to write. We have a thing called the internet, you know."

"So Pella tells me."

"A theater in Chicago is already considering one of my plays. If I need to go there or New York or wherever, I'll go. But I'd be very happy staying here in the meantime. I'll get a job at Café Oo after the summer if I have to."

Affenlight chuckled. "Café Oo?"

"I'm an excellent barista." Owen kissed him, soft and long. "Are you going to take me to bed now?"

 _Bed_. How often had he imagined stretching out there, feeling the entire length of Owen's body against the entire length of his? 

"Am I rushing things?" he asked, hand creeping up under Owen's jacket. "We're talking about living together, making plans together... and we haven't even slept together. What if we're entirely incompatible?"

Owen tilted his head just enough to indicate how amusing he found the question, and set to work on unbuttoning the rest of Affenlight's shirt. "You're a very sweet and considerate lover, Guert. And a very sweet and considerate person, besides."

"You've never seen me naked. What if I have horrific scarring? Or tattoos?"

"Unless one of them's a swastika, I wouldn't worry about it. Besides, I have seen you naked. More or less."

Affenlight watched as Owen parted his shirt and ran a hand up over his belly. "Did you have a telescope trained on my bedroom window?"

"Not at all. I have an internet connection. And Harvard's rowing club has some very interesting pictures of one Professor G. Affenlight wearing nothing but some shorts that don't leave much to the imagination."

"Oh god."

"So yes," Owen said, pushing the shirt back off his shoulders, "I know about your whale, and I know how good you feel in my mouth, and I have no idea why we're not in bed yet."

A lifetime of female lovers hadn't prepared him in the least for having Owen in his bedroom, Affenlight reflected. It wasn't simply that Owen was male, thus rendering his heterocentric ideas of dominance or gentlemanly conduct either invalid or irrelevant. It wasn't even that Owen was both young and utterly unconcerned by self-image, while Affenlight couldn't help but compare himself very unfavorably to the long-haired boy in the register, or even his Harvard rower self from ten years ago. It was that, for the first time since high school, he deeply cared what Owen thought about him - his looks, his actions. 

"Do you think I'll ever get you to relax?" Owen asked as they lay together, the bedside lamp still on at his request. "No one's going to interrupt. Besides, if someone finds you sucking me off, it's their problem, not yours."

"It's not that." If they could just lie here and do nothing but lie here, breathing together, feeling each other's warmth, Owen always within reach, Affenlight would be blissfully happy. "I don't know what to do."

Without his glasses, Owen looked so innocent as to be positively angelic, even as his hand drifted over Affenlight's hip, twisted down to encircle his half-hard penis. "What would you do if I were a woman?"

"There are some different body parts involved, O."

"Does it matter?"

“I think it might.” The breadth of his reading on the subject over the past year might have made even Pella – even Owen himself – blush. He’d tackled the subject of his feelings and longing thoughts of Owen with the same academic rigor he’d applied to almost every challenging subject since he turned thirty. But making love, much like playing football or being a parent, was hardly something he could master through words on a page.

Owen didn’t seem, never seemed, impatient or frustrated with him. His smoke-gray eyes were lit up with curiosity instead. “Did you think of me in the last year? Fantasize about me? What did you think about doing to me? Or having me do to you?”

Of course he’d thought. Had thought so hard as to almost exhaust thoughts on the subject. He’d fantasized too, but that was harder to put into words.

“Or did you just jerk off thinking about reading Chekhov to me?” 

“ _God_ , Owen.” 

Affenlight kissed him with his eyes closed, it seemed easier that way no matter how beautiful Owen was, no matter how long he’d wanted just to catch a glimpse of him. It wasn’t about pretending Owen was a girl as his hand stroked down from Owen’s cheek over the smooth skin of his back, down to the muscle of his ass, which tensed as he touched it. It was more about pretending he wasn’t himself, that awkward, shy farmboy at his core who had only briefly been replaced by a confident, womanizing Harvard man.

He tugged Owen in closer, feeling Owen’s erection jabbing at the crease of his thigh, and that was nice too. He’d been completely ambivalent about his physical, sexual desire for Owen right up to and beyond the point he’d first knelt down in his office and taken Owen in his mouth. It had been awkward and strange and a little nauseating at first, but even if he hadn’t been very good at it at the time he’d still felt Owen stiffen against his tongue, had heard Owen’s moans of pleasure and gasps of breath, had _made_ Owen, beautiful Owen, come. Thinking it over again that night in bed by himself, he’d been a lot more aroused by it in retrospect. The next morning he’d read up on the subject via websites he half-expected to be blocked by the college system, and by the time Owen visited his office again he was longing to be given another chance.

“Guert,” Owen said, almost a whine.

Affenlight opened his eyes.

“Do you really think I know so much? I’ve had sex with three guys other than you. Three. And I doubt two of them knew any more than you do or I did.”

The idea that Owen could possibly not be an expert at every aspect of life barring, perhaps, child-rearing and cunnilingus, was an astonishing thought.

“But I don’t even know what you like,” Affenlight said.

Owen smiled. “Me neither. But you feel good.”

***

Most days, alarm or not, Affenlight woke up like clockwork or through some impressive mental conditioning at four in the morning. Today, for the first time in he couldn’t remember how many years, he was woken up by sunlight streaming in through his bedroom window, falling in streaks across the bed. It was still early – he squinted at the radio clock by the bed before realizing that the chapel was striking eight – but it was Saturday. He had nothing to get up for, not even a stack of paperwork left over from the previous week. Nothing but maybe writing up that paper idea he’d had at the conference last month, making good on his decision to put in some time at the gym, and checking that he and his daughter were still on speaking terms.

All those grand schemes, however, depended very much on the idea that he would be getting out of bed at all. Which, given the slender brown arm slung around his ribs and the touch of warm skin at his back, didn’t seem very likely.

“I’d forgotten how loud those bells are,” Owen muttered.

“Mm. No rest for the wicked.”

He felt Owen nod, a sole fingertip raised to stroke over the tattoo that adorned his arm. “Under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales.”

Affenlight smiled, taking Owen’s hand in his, pulling him closer. “I might ask what you mean by hugging a fellow male in this matrimonial style.”

“Just be grateful I didn’t bring a tomahawk to bed.” Owen’s lips found his neck, kissed him tenderly there. “Do you have to get up?”

“No…” He would have said the same thing even if he had an urgent, unmissable meeting in ten minutes. “I have a dinner with the trustees tonight. You could come.”

“You should take Pella.”

“Why?”

“She likes dressing up, and I’m trying my best not to get you fired before the weekend’s out. Doubtless we’d both argue with everyone in the room, but people probably find it adorable when she does it.”

It was true. At first Affenlight had assumed it was due to Pella’s age – it really had been adorable for a pre-teen to hold such adamant positions on Nietzsche and Thoreau. But not much had changed in the years since. He nodded. “A terrible gender divide.”

“I suspect it has very little to do with gender, Guert. More those devastating Affenlight genes.”

“Pella takes after her mother.”

Owen shifted. “Really? I think she looks a lot like you. Albeit with more estrogen. Besides, you have exactly the same way of getting people to agree with you, not because you’ve bullied them into it with your intellect or expertise, but because you’re so gosh-darn _nice_ about the whole thing.” His hand slipped out of Affenlight’s grasp, trailed downward. “And we all love trying to get you to smile.”

“You don’t even need to try.” 

Affenlight turned over onto his back, and it was still somehow a surprise that Owen was there, really there, after so many nights of fractured dreams and vague, undefined longing. Now Owen was here, and his body was here too, and last night Affenlight had done his best to resolve the two once and for all. 

It was good to kiss him without urgency or fear. Kissing, at least, differed very little whether it was a woman or man in his bed, and he liked it, besides. It was true that reading, the act of reading aloud, of speaking words to another, aroused him… at least in Owen’s case. But there was more that tongues could do, a more immediate connection, something that didn’t require language.

Was he ever _bad_ at this, he asked himself. Was it something that needed to be learned, the way he felt he needed to learn everything about love and sex and all they entailed? On discovering Melville for the first time, and with him the entirety of literature, culture, history, religion, and politics, he’d been so overwhelmed with his own inadequacy that even taking the first step to comprehension had seemed impossible. But he’d checked out _Typee_ from the library, blown off a few football practices and a couple of biology labs, and studied it as though it were yet another textbook, dictionary and hefty encyclopedia on hand. It hadn’t been until the third time through, after he’d looked up all the words, agonized over references, given himself a headache through the search for _meaning_ , that he’d actually enjoyed it. 

_I’m not smart enough. I’m not good enough. I don’t know how._ The boy he’d been then, with his football crew-cut and science background and a destiny awaiting him on a family dairy farm, should have given up. He should have looked at the book, if not the speech itself, declared it boring, and redoubled his efforts at being an almost adequate quarterback on an entirely hopeless team. His natural talents tended toward the practical rather than verbal… or so he’d always thought.

Owen’s hair was short enough that it could never be a mess, the sunlight hitting his eyes so they looked an almost pearlescent blue. Affenlight had seen him stoned, had seen him with his jaw grotesquely swollen, and had now seen him moments after waking up. No matter into what situations or unflattering clothes life seemed to thrust Owen Dunne, he never looked anything but beautiful.

In comparison, Affenlight judged that he himself probably looked like an old and not particularly fit professor who badly needed some espresso and a shower. Owen, though, was looking at him, touching him, kissing him, like he was none of that. Or like he was all of that, but that Owen was inexplicably attracted to old, not particularly fit professors who were barely awake and probably stank after a night of relatively energetic sex. 

“I can see you thinking,” Owen said softly.

“One of my few vices.”

“One I greatly admire. And yet…”

“And yet.”

Under yesterday’s sleekly cut suit, Owen’s body was just as slender as it ever had been, somehow slim without being bony, delicate without being weak. Owen smiled, mischief in his eyes, and pushed back the covers, throwing a leg over Affenlight’s hips and leaning forward to kiss him again. 

I could wake up every morning to this, Affenlight thought. Whether it was here, or in a house in town, or a Cambridge apartment, or anywhere else in the world… He badly wanted Owen there, just as much – more – as he’d wanted him over the past year of solitude and separation. Nothing seemed to matter, nothing did matter, but that.

He made coffee while Owen showered, had showered himself while Owen sat naked in bed, reading the latest edition of the _Westish Bugler_. His phone, switched off since yesterday evening’s conversation with Gibbs, told a story of several missed calls, all from people apparently not interested in leaving voicemail or sending texts. The computer downstairs in his office might have more news: stern emails, or perhaps Twitter-fed gossip, congratulations from Owen’s activist friends. He was torn between assuming that his actions were controversial and shocking and newsworthy enough for people to care, and the perhaps more modest and realistic assumption that no one but himself could possibly be interested in his sex life.

“You need new shampoo,” Owen said, one of Affenlight’s towels tied around his waist, as he defogged his glasses. “Among other things. Maybe we could drive out to Door County? I know Westish still doesn’t have anything approaching a mall, and I’m not sure you want me buying personal lubricant from the campus store.”

Affenlight considered this. “What’s wrong with my shampoo?”

“Oh Guert,” Owen began, and sighed. “I’ll have to prepare another reading list for you. Suffice to say I’d prefer a more ethical and significantly less toxic product. Even though my hair barely requires anything more than water, I’m quite attached to yours.”

So was Affenlight, in more than the literal sense. “Whatever you like.”

“Good. Also, there appears to be no actual food in this fridge.” 

Affenlight sipped his espresso. “Mrs. McCallister brings me dinner.”

“Guert, man cannot live on pasta and espresso alone. We’re going shopping. Oh, and I told my mother we’d have coffee with her before she flies back to San Jose… When’s your dinner?”

“Seven.”

“All right.” Owen unzipped one of his bags and pulled out clean, neatly-folded clothes for the day: a white t-shirt, skinny jeans artfully bleached and torn, and undershorts that, it seemed to Affenlight, were a little too earnestly pink. “Please let me know if I’m infringing on your lifestyle. I’m very aware I can be a little too domineering at times. Blame my single-parent household and rare affection for cleaning products.”

Affenlight thought about his own single-parent household. _Domineering_ wasn’t quite the word for how he’d been with Pella. Still, she and Owen seemed to have grown up to be quite similarly strong, opinionated personalities.

“I’m not sure I have a lifestyle for you to infringe upon.”

“Of course you do. But it might be better suited to an undergrad dorm or, better still, a wooden hut with Thoreau as your neighbor.” 

Owen, having somehow fit into those impressively tight jeans, smoothed his t-shirt, adjusted his glasses, and sat down, his knees nudging Affenlight’s in the breakfast nook. “Henry quite liked having me as a roommate, cleaning the place for him, buying him clothes because he looked quite literally like a juvenile mechanic who’d just stepped off the bus from South Dakota. But you’re not Henry.”

Affenlight couldn’t help but agree. “My batting skills are exceptionally average.”

Owen smiled, taking Affenlight’s right hand between both of his. “What I mean to say is, you’re allowed to have a differing opinion. We’re very far from being the same person, Guert, and I wouldn’t want to change that.”

“If I object to your choice of shampoo, I promise I’ll let you know.”

They kissed over espresso until Affenlight’s phone dinged with a text, and Owen went to brush his teeth.

_Sleep well? Coffee later? Love you._

Pella. She never used abbreviations, out of the possibly correct assumption that he either wouldn’t understand, or had an actual vendetta against understanding such forms of language. Still, it was something new to have her be the one to reach out, to send that all-too-easily translated message of “are we okay?” the morning after something potentially disturbing had occurred. In the past it had generally involved Pella’s teenage self and vast quantities of alcohol.

He tapped out a message about the dinner that evening and the hope she would accompany him. Even if it was impossible to really talk at such events, at least they would be together.

Whether the rest of the world would be so forgiving of his transgressions remained a mystery. But it was a bright June day outside, weather that required no jacket, and Owen was here, really here, jotting down a shopping list on his BlackBerry and stretching out a hand for Affenlight to take.

The fear was still there – of stares and whispers, of losing Owen or Pella or the college, or all three. But, hour by hour, it was fading as last year’s illicit, covert romance gradually transformed into daily life.

He snatched up the Audi keys from the coffee table and took Owen’s hand.

“Do you want to know what they’re saying about us on Facebook?” Owen asked, slipping his BlackBerry into his jeans in a way that probably violated a few laws of physics.

“Not really.”

The quad was surprisingly busy for a June morning, with students lured out by the warmth of the sunshine, some carrying Frisbees and soccer balls, most wearing campus t-shirts that boasted of the size of the proverbial Westish Dick. At the base of the statue sat a young couple kissing, blind to anything but each other.

Owen nudged him. “We’ve started a trend.”

There were a few “morning, President Affenlight”s, and Owen high-fived a passing boy in a Harpooners cap, the wires from his earbuds dangling down his shirt. Doubtless the accusations and the unpleasantness he’d expected would still come, tonight or at some point in the near future. But Westish was still home, still the place that had embraced him as a young man and rewarded him with academic success, ambitions, dreams, and now love. He couldn’t help but be happy here.

“We could catch a movie, if you like,” he said, unlocking the Audi. “Pella’s been talking incessantly about some superhero thing. It might not be completely terrible.”

Owen opened his mouth, appeared to reconsider, and instead just nodded. “See,” he said once they were both in the car. “We’ll have the most normal relationship on campus before long.”

Affenlight smiled and thumbed on the CD player. “Still want to learn about opera?”


End file.
